Yellow For Brown

Junior Boys - Double Shadow

For one year of my life, for lack of any better ideas about what to do with myself, I regularly attended "raves". For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of the "rave", it's actually quite simple. A group of people get together in a room, do a great deal of questionable drugs, and dance to loud electronic music. Not just any electronic music, though: loud and bad house music often punctuated by cheesy vocal samples saying something like "do you believe in the night!" or "love is all there is...is...is". I often found that one song blended into the next - although not due to any technical mastery by the DJ whose job it was to blend the songs together - but mostly because the songs were universally boring, repetitive and unimaginative.

But one thing that always struck me was that the drum and synth sounds used to make most of the house music being played were actually quite interesting, especially their focus on the extremely low end of the sonic spectrum and their achievement of a surprising warmth using almost totally synthesized sounds. The problem was that the sounds were being put together in the most boring, predictable way possible so as to facilitate DJing and the kind of jumping/dancing people usually do at raves.

That's why when I first heard the Junior Boys I was so excited. It's the same building blocks of the mid-90s house music I was subjected to, but being used to construct songs that are actually interesting: songs that sound like they were written for people who really like Bauhaus but don't really like the kind of people who like Bauhaus or for people who think the Magnetic Fields album Get Lost describes a crucial aspect of their personality. Okay, admittedly, I'm just describing myself now and not what the song sounds like, but you're listening to the song, right? Isn't it awesome?

Holland - Yellow For Brown

Where the Junior Boys are clean and precise, this song is covered in detritus and is falling eratically towards the earth. Where the Junior Boys are sad and isolated, this song is harassing you on the street. Where the Junior Boys are listening to house music as they drive through southern Ontario, this song is listening to Sonic Youth and hitchiking in the financial district.

[Download Holland's self titled EP/Buy the Junior Boys' So This Is Goodbye]

And I dreamed all night about a beautiful girl

Something I'd like to make a theme of my popsheep narrative is to discover what makes some songs speak to me. I would also like to think about the different ways songs are made.

"Well I dined last night with scarface ron on talapia fish cakes and fried black swan"

The first thing that drew me into this song was Wait's brilliant talent for creating a phase that does three things at once: A) It sounds good B) It is somehow sweeping, dramatic, fantastic or romantic C) It creates a character, and a narrative. This allows appraoching the song from many different contexts

"Well god's green hair is where I slept last/He balanced the world on a blade of grass"

He also successfully creates the kind of rhythms and rhymes that make you want to sing along as loud as you can in your car(trust me). The melody and pace are simple and predictable. This in my mind is another strength.

"C Frank and Burly Joe Oats/Who is the King of all these folks" (unsure on these names)

This song also transports you into a world that isn't your own(or a least it isn't mine). This is a world of times past, or at least the fantasy of such. Filled with a score of colourful characters that you wish you spent last night dining with. It is a novel in 5 minutes.

discuss!


Tom Waits - Bottom of the world From the upcoming Orphans

Beach House

Lulling me like the sweet sound of a siren, Beach House's new Album has me curling up in bed with the covers pulled up around my ears. If I close my eyes I can almost imagine myself somewhere warm, rather than the cold place I call home. But I'm not on a California beach, no I'm in the deep Mississippi and it is too damn hot to move.

Take a drink of sweet tea, relax--relax.

The drums beat slow, heavy and regular like my pulse. The melody saunters and swaggers its way into the room, while the vocals try their best to fly out the windows. Listen.


Beach House - Master Of None

Back From The Dead

Sorry for our two day long disappearance. It looks like our domain expired or something, but Jay says that everything is back and working. In celebration of our re-emergence we offer you an mp3.

David-Ivar Herman Dune - Lovers Are Waterproof

I found this today and realized that it makes a perfect popsheep re-birth-day gift, being a side-project of one of our most frequently posted about artists who was also the subject of my first ever post. When I first started listening to this song, I was kind of disconcerted to hear the trademark Herman-Dune charmingly-accented-English replaced with a much less affected sounding, almost southwestern drawl. But, then again, the Herman-Dune charm extends beyond their use of so many strangely/beautifully accented words (my favourites being "baby" and "bastards"). It's also their clever-but-not-cloying lyrics. It's the tiny-claps used as percussion in this song that sound almost like fat raindrops falling on the softly-rendered chords. Besides, the closer I listened, the more I realized that it was the delivery that had changed, not the accent - not that it really matters, but I found it somehow reassuring, in the way that you want at least a few of the things that you care about to stay the same when everything else around you seems to be getting less and less comprehensible. Anyway, this is another free song from the frequently updated Myspace page of David-Ivar Herman Dune.

Update (via songs:illinois):

The new Herman Dune video is pretty much the best thing ever, objectively speaking.

Peter, Bjorn & John - Young Folks

After this wonderful animated video had been brought to my attention by a friend, StG guest blogger Marcello Carlin wrote a review well worth reading.

The Choice Is Yours

Below are three of my favourite hip-hop songs that I happily stumbled upon browsing around YouTube the other day. Now, I know what you're thinking: these are precisely the three songs that people who don't listen to hip-hop say are their favourite so as to maintain a modicum of indie-hipster cred or that Pitchfork would put mid-way through their "Best Songs of the mid-1990s" list to make it look a little less white and rockist. Well, you're probably right. And that's why I don't post about hip-hop very often, because I clearly just come across as someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. I'm sure that my favourite jazz or electronic records have the same appearance of a person who read some kind of "essential albums" list on metafilter and really has no knowledge whatsoever about the genre beyond that.

Anyway, these videos are all downright terrible which is, I guess, part of their charm.

"Liquid Swords"



"The Choice is Yours"



"Passin' Me By"

You Were Always On My Mind

I'd like to second Jay's love for Daytrotter and have, therefore, finally added it to our links. An impressively ambitious web-zine, Daytrotter has opted for a less immediately accessible but often more thoughtful approach to music writing and criticism than many of the more-Pitchfork-esque sites out there. Instead of daily reviews or news tidbits, they spend entire weeks reviewing single albums, create beautiful artwork accompanying their articles and, most impressively, manage to convince some of my favourite artists to record studio sessions that are published for free on the Daytrotter site.

Bonnie Prince Billy - New Partner (Daytrotter Session)

After suggesting (I think only half seriously) that the song "takes parts of Nirvana’s 'Heart-Shaped Box,' the Rolling Stones’ 'Get Off of My Cloud,' both Willie’s and Elvis’s versions of 'You Were Always On My Mind,' and the song 'Tony' by D.C. Powers, as performed by Johnny Cash", Will Oldham goes on to make the frustrating observation that this song is "somewhat disturbingly, about not not loving someone who you are not with.” In a way, this statement actually makes a bit of sense. The premise of the Willie and Elvis song, which always struck me as kind of absurd, is that despite being a total fuckup the singer should be given a second chance because at least they were thinking about the person they were cheating on and neglecting all those years. In Oldham's song, though, the fact that the subject of the song was "always on his mind" has much less clear implications. The lyrics are still loaded with suggestions of infidelity and sexual tension but the song is sufficiently vague to take on whatever meaning that the listener wants to attach to it. The more that I think about it, this is probably what makes 'New Partner' one of the my favourite songs by Oldham (or anyone else for that matter). I should also add that this particular recording is perfect, in its own way, sounding almost like you're sitting in the room with Oldham while he's playing.

Frog Eyes - Caravan Breakers (Daytrotter Session)

How do you possibly capture the genius of the Frog Eyes live show, the sweat flying from Carey Mercer's face as he shakes out these mad, beautiful songs in such a way as give the impression that the very act of performing them may just kill him in the process? Well, frankly, you don't. But the Daytrotter Frog Eyes session comes as close as you can hope to putting at least a tiny bit of that energy on tape. For those of you who aren't yet Frog Eyes converts, this song may just be the culmination of everything that's great about the band captured within an epic song structure: the manic, frantic energy of Carey Mercer, punctuated by dramatic shifts in tempo and direction, opening with an ethereal keyboard line that's unexpectedly interrupted by a small scream and ending on a hypnotic melody played over a wordless lament composed entirely of la's and da's.

Casey Dienel

If I were on a street at this very moment I would stand upon my soapbox and declare that Casey Dienel's "Better in Manhattan" will make your life better. The product of a daytrotter session, this song hasn't made it to one of Dienel's albums yet but has me imagining that her new album will be something great. She is a student of the narrative school of songwriting, who is not afraid to drop a few hooks to catch you in her web.

Witness when the refrain "Sugar Sugar Sugar, Come here" enters the scene. I dare you to not be captivated and engrossed by the story being sung so sweetly to you.

Casey Dienel - Better in Manhattan From The Daytrotter Sessions

They make songs not babies

So my good friends Jacob and Joy are on a Western Canada tour, that they kicked off here in Kelowna last night. Well the actual kick off was last saturday at the 12 hour party "deckfest" that they hosted at their house! But Kelowna was the first out of town show. Part of the reason for the tour other than testing out the new volvo was to put the word out on their new EP.
You can hear some songs and see if they are playing in your town by looking at their myspace page.

Put A Penny In The Slot

Two minutes after hearing Fionn Regan's song "Put A Penny in the slot" on StG I had hit the submit button to have the album The End of history express mailed to me from the UK. Fionn (say "finn") comes off more Fairtale era Donovan than Dylan. He has the right combination of voice timber, witty lyrics and guitar aptitude that make him shine amongst the mass of singer-songwriters. In all likelihood we are going to be hearing a lot more about Fionn Regan pretty soon, and rightly so judging by the fact that every song on this album is fantastic. He happens to be one of those people who make good music that also has that mass appeal quality.

Get Lonely Jesus!

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The Thermals - Pillar of Salt

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When you say it out loud to yourself, the theme of the new Thermals album The Body The Blood The Machine sounds like a bad idea: a pop-punk epic about life in a fascist, futuristic red-state America. Fortunately, the album doesn't sound like the shitty, preachy fart noises that the above description implies that it might. No, it sounds like intelligent, political punk rock in the vein of early Propagandhi or something: built on fast tempo, crunchy, power-chord heavy songs with political-sounding, well written lyrics and anthemic choruses.

[buy]

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The Mountain Goats - Woke Up New

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I'm still not sure how to react to the new Mountain Goats record. Like the Thermals album discussed above, it's also a concept album of sorts, albeit with a much more straightforward theme: you are alone and it is very, very hard to be alone. 'Woke Up New' is, in a way, of the quintessential song off the album. The narrator merely describes a morning in the life of someone who just broke up with/lost their significant other, going through mundane tasks like making coffee, putting on a sweater, turning up the heat, and going outside. Essentially, every task is infused with the sad memory of the person who's not there, and is followed by the refrain: "What do I do, what do I do, without you?". The song has a literalness to it that I'm not used to with Mountain Goats songs and that's partially the source of my unease with the album. It's starkness and bleakness is unrelenting, without the usual infusions of humour that made earlier albums about an abusive father or a house full of drug addicts seem far less heavy than they were.

[buy]

G love and Special Sauce/Wolf Parade

Apparently they fought, or food-fought, or at least verbally abused each other ( montrealshowssss). Why can't they understand that they're not so different???



Actual posi-music posts soon!